My hat is off to you parents who both work outside the home. I don't know how you do it, because our kids don't go to school every day anymore. It must cost you a lot of time away from your jobs or a lot of money in day care.

I really hate coordinating and juggling everyone's lives, but when you toss all the days and half days our children have off, it must be downright insane.

I'm saying this because my kids are off today for teacher in-service, they are off next Thursday for Veterans day, they have a late arrival on the 17th and then there is Thanksgiving weekend. My kids catch a bus a couple miles from my house, with only about 2 blocks of it covered by sidewalks. So I'm not being an over-protective parent, they really do need to be driven to the bus; although if I told them they had to walk two miles to get to school, I'm pretty sure they'd be missing the bus every day.But my kids are 13 and 15, little kids can't be left alone to get themselves off to school on these late days or to stay home by themselves on the stay-home days.

I understand the teachers need time to get grading done, but I'm hoping they have most of it done by the time they hit one of these in-service days; after all, if you have 150 students, as the middle and high school level teachers have, you better have started your grading already. In fact, I can look up my daughters' grades at any time during the school year because it's all posted online, if the teachers are keeping up with it.

I'm not complaining about our teachers, I know they work hard, but quarters only happen every three months and my kids have at least one day and one half day a month. At least our district finally got rid of presidents' "week" and now it's only presidents' day and one extra day. For years it was a whole week, after they'd only been in school for seven weeks from Christmas break.

I also know some of the teachers I've talked to don't like in-service because they feel the administration doesn't actually give them the time to work on their own stuff, they are constantly giving them more rules and regulations to add to their lists.

I'm not sure if private schools have all these days off. I'm sure I'll hear from my sister as she teaches in a private school. But I just say to you parents who have to juggle your schedules with these extra days off, hats off to you!

Sherpa

11/7/2010 10:40:58 am

Those in-service days usually aren't for the personal work we need to do in the classroom. They are for workshops, meetings, writing in-depth studies, working on curriculum and the like. Most teachers work after work. I am with kids six hours a day and they easily generate six more hours of work for me in the areas of evaluation (grading papers), planning and preparing. All that is done in the afternoon, evenings, weekends, and during vacations. That's all unpaid time.

Teachers don't like in-services either. I'd rather be with the kids. The only time I like off is the half day I get once a quarter to finalize my report cards. But, since I know that isn't enough time, I start them ahead of time so I don't have to work on them during the weekend.

My proposal is that the kids come to school for four days a week and we get a day for us to do the work our classroom generates. Frequently on snow days you'll find a teacher who made it to the classroom grateful for a day without kids so that he/she can get ready for the kids.